Corrag. Susan Fletcher

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СКАЧАТЬ then? I asked this. But I think I knew.

      They rode out a third time. He shook his head. He was quiet for a long time, so that I heard the wind move high above us. I smelt the pines, and the smoke. Hung by the neck in Hexham. Four years ago, this winter.

      I saw it. I was there again, and saw it – the crow waiting, and the crowd’s cheer as the doors went bang.

       Was his beard yellow?

      He glanced over. Yes. You saw?

      I did not tell him I often saw it, in my head – the one, small bounce when the rope reached its end. They were all your men?

       My brother, an uncle, three friends.

      He said no more on this. He said no more at all that night – only you can sleep soundly here, which I believed. And I did sleep soundly – beneath my mother’s cloak, breathing night-time air.

      But no, there was no more, on those deaths. I know some people think that to talk of others dying is not right – that it makes them die a second time. Maybe he thought his brother died a new death that night, by the fire, with goat’s meat in our mouths. He had looked so woeful. He’d rubbed at his eyes. And thieving is wrong – even a hen, or a turnip or two – but not much deserves the scaffold, and these men never did.

      I’m sorry I said.

      He nodded. We took two cows and they took five lives.

      I don’t think to talk of how people died makes them die twice-over, though. I think it keeps them living. But we all think different things.

      He was the one I knew. Him with the reddish bloom on his face which I reckoned came with his birth – and which no herbs could fade. It ran from his brow, over one eye. It was plum-coloured, and shiny, and Cora would have liked it. She liked differences. She said true beauty lay in them.

      The other Mossmen kept in shadows, or slept, but the plum-faced one stayed near me – as if he wanted to. Maybe he did. Maybe he felt closer to his brother by being with a girl who’d seen his bad death. I don’t know.

      Are you coming? he’d ask.

       Where to?

      Into the forest, always. He trod old paths. He led me to streams which silvered with fish, and we gathered berries there, and firewood. This, he said, is how to catch the fish – and it was slowness that did it. He moved his hand so slowly that the fish thought it was weed until it scooped it up, into the air, with there! See? He showed me how to smoke it, and lift it from its bones. I whispered thank you to the fish as I ate it – and the Mossman smiled a little, said Corrag – it cannot hear you now. By the fire he showed me how to skin a rabbit, how to use its fur. We mended the small roof which we all huddled under, in hard rain – with moss, and thick branches. He showed me how. And one day I said do you know about mushrooms at all? Which he did not. So I took him out to the dankest parts and gave him their names, showed him their pale, velvet underskirts – and I was glad of this, for I felt I’d been taking more than giving, and I like giving more.

      And he was the best for stories. He had many – so many. Maybe he knew that I loved strange and wild tellings, for when we picked thistles out of manes together, or shook trees to bring the grubs down, or sat by the fire with broth, he’d speak of them. I’d say tell me of…And some tales were of such wonder that I could not breathe with them. Unearthly, whispering tales – of red-coloured moons, or a boy who spoke more wisdom than any grown man could, or of a green, northern light in the sky. Of an eggshell with three eggs inside it. He spoke of how he fell, once, with a wound and woke to find a rough tongue licking his blood away – a fox’s tongue. A fox? I said. But he was sure of it.

      He had reiving tales in him, too. Not his own – for he said he had never reived in the true sense of it. But the ones who came before me…Their times were brutal times – hiding, raiding, creeping in the dusk, fighting with March-wardens, breaking free from cells…They burnt all the farmsteads they reived from so the night sky was orange. Filled with sparks.

      Like the sun had come early, I said. But what I also thought was why? Why would a man choose such a life? To butcher and burn? To hurt other souls. It made no sense to my small ears, and had no good in it – I said so. There are other ways to live.

      He sighed. Aye – perhaps. But it was always the way in these parts. Such hatred in the air…You could smell it in the wood-smoke, and hear it in the wind…Still can. A Scot may cut an Englishman down but he’d give his own life for the Scot by his side, and so it is in England, also. That hasn’t changed in my lifetime. Nor will it. There’s been too much fighting and slyness to ever clean the air of it. He shook his head. Politics…

      This made me think. In the dusk and in the dripping trees, I said Scotland to myself. If it was not for their accents, this place felt like England to me.

       Slyness?

      He turned his eyes to look at me. He narrowed them. You don’t know much of countries, do you? Of thrones? Loyalties? He shook his head a little. If you’re going north-and-west, my wee thing, you should know more than you do.

      We sat by the fire, that night. I stitched at a jerkin which was half-undone, and as I sewed he told me what he called must-knows, and truths.

       Scotland is two countries.

      I pricked my thumb. Two? Scotland? Two?

      England says one. But England’s wrong about that. Highland and Lowland, he told me. Like two different worlds. He threw on a pine branch, and out came its smell – sweet, and like Christmas.

       Which one is this? That we’re in?

      These are the borders, he said. Which is its own country too, in many ways. But they lead into the Lowland parts not far from here – and the Lowlands are green, and lush. More people live in them. They are civil people, too, or so they like to say. They say they’re more learned, more wise of the world than the rest. They speak English as we do. ’Tis the regal part – the Queen Mary who is dead now rode to her Bothwell’s castle, near here, and there is Edinburgh which is reekie and tall, but that’s a true city. He shook his head. I’ll never see it. Carlisle’s as big as I’ll see in my life.

       That’s big. Cora said so.

       But not like Edinburgh is. They say its castle is so high that you might see London from it. It’s where they hung a bishop from the palace walls, and every new king or queen rides the Royal Mile so the crowds may cheer and wave at them.

      I don’t like kings I said.

      I’m not too fond myself. But most Lowlanders are favouring this new Orange king, and – he pointed – you should remember this.

      I scowled. It was the Orange king’s wheezes that had helped to put witch on Cora, and I sewed very firmly. I tugged my needle through.

       But the Highlands…

      I glanced up.

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